Few people know better than school superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer that disciplining a tenured teacher can be a long and expensive process.
An English teacher in his Long Island district remains on the payroll, earning an annual salary of $113,559, even after pleading guilty earlier this month to drunken driving charges _ her fifth DWI arrest in seven years.
The teacher will remain on paid leave at least until a disciplinary hearing in August, and it will be up to an impartial arbitrator to decide whether she needs to be fired as she faces a likely prison sentence.
“It is very frustrating that the process takes so long,” Gerstenlauer conceded.